Opera on a Grand Scale in Small City

The “Grand” in Grand Opera refers to more than just level of ambition or pretensions. When done correctly, opera is an undertaking of grand proportions, entailing stage sets, vocal talent and an orchestra. Behind the curtain, a roster of directors and conductors must pull the strings, while in the box office the marketing machinery works on filling the house.

Such complex and often expensive demands, coupled with a relatively small audience in recent decades, have limited opera companies to larger American cites. Opera-philes living in the sticks--the outback of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, for instance--have learned to go without, or else they expect to travel for their Wagner fix.

Enter the Santa Barbara Grand Opera Assn., which may be the most daring cultural venture in the region this year. The fledgling company, which has been growing for three years, opened its first official season at Lobero Theatre this week with a romantic favorite, Puccini’s “La Boheme.”

The production boasts some impressive talent, including conductor Valery Ryvkin, currently assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and stage director Bodo Igesz, a Met veteran. Both have worked on prior SBGOA productions. In the spring, the season continues with a concert version of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and a fully staged version of Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”

This is not the first time an opera company has taken root in Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara Civic Opera Assn. operated from 1954 to 1967, with varying degrees of success. Comparing the two ventures, Grand Opera co-founder Marilyn Gilbert offered, “Let’s say we’re the first ones attempting to make a splash, to really make a real opera company, as much as we can.”

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Gilbert, a lawyer by profession, and her husband, Nathan Rundlett, a retired teacher, are opera singers themselves. After moving to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles in 1981, Gilbert said they often wondered: “Gee, with all the talent here in Santa Barbara and the large number of people well-educated in the arts, why isn’t there an opera company here? The Music Academy of the West was doing a once-a-year opera production, a very credible job of it, but that wasn’t satisfying enough.”

They planted the seeds for the company a few years back. “The truth of it is that we started from a desire to just get up on the stage and sing ourselves,” Gilbert said. “There was such a good response to what I think of now as a funny production of ‘Die Fledermaus,’ we figured, well, let’s try another one. So we’ve kind of backed into this, and now we have this tiger by the tail.”

To date, they have put on performances of “Die Fledermaus,” “Ahmad and the Night Visitor,” “Hansel and Gretel” and “La Traviata,” in addition to presenting concerts around town. Gilbert laughed and said, “If you haven’t heard of us, it isn’t because we haven’t tried.”

But there is something validating about presenting a full season, however modestly scaled. As Gilbert noted, people don’t think of you as a real company until you can offer a subscriber ticket. “Even though this seems a little soon--we’re not yet 3 years old--I just felt it was necessary to develop our audience and to attract the kind of support we need,” she said.

Among the opera company’s plans are a touring company to present opera in other parts of Santa Barbara County and beyond. Gilbert is also adamant about building an educational program, and not just because arts education is a cause du jour. “I think we really must develop our future audiences if we want to have opera around 50 years from now,” she said.

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This year, the Santa Barbara Grand Opera Assn. has its debut season. In the future, who knows? An opera house?

Gilbert recalled having lunch with Marilyn Horne last summer. The famed soprano told her, “You’re a mover and shaker. When are we going to have an opera house here?”

“Give me five years,” Gilbert responded.

Farfetched as it sounds at this early point, Gilbert keeps an open mind about the company’s future. “We’re a small town and we have to keep that idea in mind, of course. But Santa Barbara is a rather unique small town and it can become a destination point for the arts.

“Look at Santa Fe,” she said, referring to the now internationally respected Santa Fe Opera. “It was just a cow town up until 20 years ago, and now the whole world makes its way to Santa Fe for opera. With all the other things that Santa Barbara has going for it, we could be the home of a really fabulous opera company. We’re working toward that.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: “La Boheme.”

* WHERE: Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido St. in Santa Barbara.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. Tuesday.

* HOW MUCH: $26-46.

* CALL: 963-0761.